Firms give flights the miss, go for telepresence

Employees at two of Wipro Technologies' centres in Bangalore can now communicate with their colleagues in one of the US centres on the video screen, obviating the need to travel the distance in connection with official work.
The country's third-largest IT company has installed what is known as telepresence technology, from networking major Cisco, at these three centres.
According to Sudip Nandy, president — technology, media & telecom (TMT), Wipro Technologies, the technology saves both time and money by cutting business travel costs.
Soaring jet fuel prices have pushed up airfares in recent months, forcing a reduction in the number of people taking to the skies. Corporates are increasingly economising on travel and asking employees to bunch up meetings, etc., in a bid to keep a leash on costs.
Wipro isn't alone in looking for alternatives to air travel. Says Alok Kejriwal, founder and chairman, Contests2Win, "In the last three years, it had almost become a habit to tell our business partners that we'll just take the next flight and come over for a meeting. That is not really the case anymore."
Needless to say, even Kejriwal is relying on technology to prune travel costs. "Earlier we used to fly in people for interviews. Not anymore. We use a lot more of video conferencing now," he says.
Dinesh Sehgal, regional director of Tandberg India, which provides video conferencing solutions, says the segment is growing at over 25% a year.
He is confident that any cutback in corporate spending on travel will only hasten the adoption of video conferencing.
The dip in business air travel is particularly sharp on the shorter routes, such as Bangalore-Chennai, Delhi-Jaipur and Mumbai-Pune. In such cases, the business travellers are shifting to rail or road.
However, Parthasarthy Basu, chief financial officer, SpiceJet Ltd begs to differ. He feels the softening in air travel is more pronounced in the leisure segment.
"Even though the overall air travel has come down, we have seen our percentage of corporate travellers increase from around 40% a few months back to 49% this month," says Basu.
04/08/08 Nirmal John & Praveena Sharma/DNA Money

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Aug 2008